


The Sword of God

by 1000lux



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: A Little Bit of Humor, Happy Ending, Loyalty, M/M, Religion, Self-Doubt, Wings, angel!Heahmund
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 23:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000lux/pseuds/1000lux
Summary: He'd seen millennia. And it had all been a bitter disappointment. A waste of his time. Far was he to criticise the son of God, but he saw not the benefit of the effort put into the creation. That was the reason he was here in the first place, having only narrowly scraped past falling entirely. A last chance for him. 'Heahmund, you aren't humble enough.' 'Heahmund, you are so full or anger and violence.' And most of all, 'Heahmund, is there no love inside you? Only anger?'





	The Sword of God

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own rights to the show or it's characters.
> 
> This story was inspired by this post: https://shieldmaiden-of-fandoms.tumblr.com/post/182029729911/could-angles-be-wrathful-so-i-felt-like-making-up

Only love  
Can bring the rain  
That makes you yearn to the sky  
Only love  
Can bring the rain  
That falls like tears from on high

(Love, reign o'er me - The Who)

***

He'd seen millennia. And it had all been a bitter disappointment. A waste of his time. Far was he to criticise the son of God, but he saw not the benefit of the effort put into the creation. That was the reason he was here in the first place, having only narrowly scraped past falling entirely. A last chance for him. 'Heahmund, you aren't humble enough.', 'Heahmund, you are so full of anger and violence.' And most of all, 'Heahmund, is there no love inside you?'

He was the sword of God. He had been since the day of his creation. Oh, he was pious, he was devout. His devotion to his father was in the slaying of his enemies. He saw no fault with himself, and that again was vanity. All these weaknesses he had were... human. Yet, he could only feel... well, not even really disgust, not even disappointment. It was more like disregard, he felt for the creation.

So, here he was, pressed into a mortal husk, to learn humility, to repent his ways. No, a voice in his head said again, love. That is what it is about.

So he'd gone to advance God's glory on earth. He'd fought the non-believers in the holy land. He'd killed hundreds of non-believers. And his maker? He'd been disappointed. Had told him it wasn't the way. He'd knelt there, in the sand of Jerusalem, praying like a mere mortal, and he'd felt the disappointment, the sadness of him having misunderstood. These were God's children too. All of them. No matter what they believed.

And he came to England. He had little care for the places, divided people only in those who believed in the Lord and those who didn't.

And in York, he met something. Something that was pure and untainted. Like the blade of his eternal sword. Something that burned like the halo of his true form.

*

He could have burned them all with heavenly fire, could have struck them down with his sword. Instead he let them drag him from his horse and throw him into the dirt. Humility, he repeated in his head, as his uncontrollable wrath threatened to light up his eyes with celestial fire. Love.

*

"Why did you not kill me?" he asked the human who'd brought him here. Who was first among all the humans he'd met. A fire burning inside him, not truly good or bad. Just like fire was. Destructive. But clean. He was untouched. Heahmund had always had a love for weapons (maybe the only love he knew). And this one was honed to perfection.

"Because I'm envious of you." Ivar replied. "I want to be like you. Whole. Healthy. A great warrior."

*

"Tell me about your God." Ivar said.

"He is a merciful God. A father to all of his children."

Ivar smiled. "My father left me out to die, because of the way I am."

"You weren't made in your father's image but in that of God. Your father was a blind man. He could not see. All of God's children that come into this life are worthy." At least that was what Heahmund had to believe. So far, though, they all seemed to him like they might as well been left out for the wolves to find, too. But wolves were gentle and majestic creatures. Good in a way humans would never be able to be. Creation in itself was beautiful, but men was flawed. It had nothing to do with useless legs, it was something inside them, something lacking. And it angered Heahmund that something inside him was lacking too. That he seemed to share all the traits that made the humans flawed, as well. Anger. Pride. Only... love? Love, that one redeeming feature that exonerated the flawed creatures in the eye of the Lord. That one quality was it that Heahmund lacked. How was he to love, when he was a blade? Made to punish, to protect... But to love? Heahmund knew duty, and yes, he did know pride, but he did not know love. Love meant wanting to preserve something, wanting to keep something. The only things Heahmund loved were already eternal. Even in those cases, was it truly love he felt for his fellow angels, for his creator? He'd known very little emotions at all, in his life. Other than determination, justification and anger. And, Father forgive him, pride.

Here on earth he'd tried to explore that elusive feeling of love. He'd tried to find it in the flesh, as most humans seemed wont to do. But there was nothing to be found there, in those pleasures of the flesh. Oh, he was susceptible to them. The flesh was weak. He had not known, had not truly had anything like that mortal flesh, before, that ran hot and volatile. And it only seemed this unpredictable flesh made him feel all his flaws so much more intensly. Made his anger and pride burn brighter. And there was hunger in him now, craving. For sensations. The sensations of the flesh in each and every form, the high of the meeting of two bodies, the pain he'd never before been able to feel during battle. Incorruptible, perpetual he'd been. Now there was hot blood pulsing in him, that asked him to gorge on every sensation he could find.

*

"I want to believe in you. I want to believe that there's someone who never lies, never cheats and never compromises."

"You can believe in me." He was all these things. There was no compromise in the merciless cut of his blade, no lie in his utter devotion. Neither would he cheat nor be cheated out of a payment in blood he'd come to claim. He wouldn't know how to. All his long long life he'd only ever dealed in absolutes. The life of an angel was filled with neither doubt nor hesitation. There was no grey. Only red and white in the blood and bone he spilled. Yet, hadn't what he'd just told Ivar, been a lie? Ivar should not believe in him. Heahmund had no allegiance to Ivar, nor to any mortal. And, yet, this lie hadn't been the first sin, he, an angel, who should have been the first among all to adhere to God's rules, had committed.

*

He fought for the young viking. His words made sense. So he went on the battlefield and slew those heathens who were not open to the Lord's word and mocked him.

That very decision found Heahmund on a field, outside Kattegat, calling out to his maker in despondency and confusion.

"Was it not good enough, again, father?! What am I supposed to do?! How can I please you?!"

"Who are you talking to, priest?" Ivar asked.

Heahmund spun around, to where the heathen was crawling towards him.

"I'm speaking to God." Heahmund replied.

Ivar chuckled. "I did not know it is usually such an animated discussion between the two of you. I imagined it to be an a little more dignified matter."

"There's not room for pride, only humility."

"It looked more like anger, to me." Ivar shrugged.

Heahmund cursed in exasperation, asking himself in horror, the next second, what this place was doing to him.

*

"It's like you don't even see that I'm a cripple." Ivar said, delicately running a finger of Heahmund's armor, in puzzlement. "Like to you it is all the same whether I walk on my feet or crawl across the floor. How can a person who's so powerful, so perfect, have so little judgement in their heart?"

Heahmund snorted (Laughter, another of those strange urges this human body brought with itself). "Oh, believe me, I am full of judgment. It is one of my greatest flaws. No... not really, I have too many of them. There are some far more griveous than that. But it certainly doesn't matter in this life how you walk. How you live. That's what matters."

"Tell me of your flaws, priest. Confess to me. Isn't that what you Christians do?"

"If I did, I wouldn't do it to you." Heahmund retorted. 

*

And God remained quiet, no answers to be found for Heahmund. But Ivar, Ivar spoke, he questioned and he answered, all the same. And Heahmund, who'd lost his way, who'd lost guidance, he listened to Ivar. Whether he'd fallen from grace or his journey still continued, he did not know. So there was no reason not stay with Ivar, when it was either way to him.

So they continued these conversations where neither believed the other and still they could not stop. Ivar wanted to claim his loyalty, thought he'd ripped him from his home country. Did he not know that Heahmund had nowhere to return to. Did not know that he was not anymore alien to him has the people in England had been.

Only in Ivar there was something Heahmund could relate to, something he'd seen on the battlefield in York already. When humans and their fragile, imperfect bodies held no secrets to Heahmund who could see their structure down to every molecule, there was something unfathomable about Ivar.

So Ivar needn't have worried that Heahmund would turn from him, because for now Heahmund had no desire to be anywhere else. Since there were no rules or sense that Heahmund could fathom, behind the task he'd been given, he might as well stay here and fight Ivar's war. Ivar demanded of him only to be the sword he was, he did not ask of him to love the people around him. He only demanded Heahmund's loyalty. Not before God, but before every other human. And Heahmund could give him that.

*

Then the final battle against Lagertha's army came and for once Ivar's plan failed. His people were overrun, death and destruction everywhere. And there on the battlefield, he saw Ivar's cart crash, him falling to the ground among his enemies.

Heahmund had not known that there would be a decision to make. He'd seen countless of meaningless lifes perish before his eyes, like grains of sand being washed away. Kings, commoners and saints, it did not matter. It was the way of things.

And, yet, here he stood and spread his wings, holy fire glowing in his eyes. And brought the wrath of heaven upon not the enemies of God but those of Ivar.

*

When Ivar looked up, he saw him standing there. The priest. Towering over him, no man still standing upright around him, nothing but broken bodies littering the ground around them. And there were wings stretching out from his shoulders. Wings that spanned so far he couldn't see their tips. And the priest was glowing.

*

Ivar was not cowed by Heahmund's celestial origin, did not bow or tremble before Heahmund's holy countenance. Was not petrified by the vast spectable of death surrounding him. Only a soft, awed smile on his face. "You were true to me, priest."

*

"Show them to me, again." Ivar said, later when he'd claimed the throne of Kattegat, eyes gleaming with something unfathomable, some indescribable hunger.

And Heahmund spread out his wings before him.

It was awe Heahmund saw in Ivar's eyes. But then he'd seen nothing but awe from the humans he'd shown himself to, throughout time. Awe was it what his appearance called for. There was nothing pious about Ivar's awe, though.

"You look like a Valkyrie." Ivar said, a mesmerized smile spreading across his face. Unafraid he reached out a hand for Heahmund's wings.

And when Ivar's finger's brushed the feathers, a shudder went through Heahmund, unexplicable in it's intensity.

And Heahmund, already a slave to these mortal sensations, said. "Do that again."

*

And if he was here to love these humans, why not start with Ivar out of all of them?

*

"This is celestial flesh you're touching," Heahmund warned.

"So?" Ivar replied, nipping on Heahmund's throat, as he let a feather running through his fingers, calling those same startled gasps from the angel he'd come to crave.

*

It had been such a long time where he'd only listened to Ivar's voice, that it came almost as a shock, when it was his father, who'd been quiet for so long, who spoke to him again.

"You have done very well, my child. You know now the feeling without which anything else becomes meaningless."

"I do, father." Heahmund replied, feeling with sudden and startling realisation another new emotion. Loss. Mortal lifes were fleeting. Yet, it seemed too short a glimpse to have to let go already again. To return to a life of duty. Become nothing but a sword again. "What do I do now?"

There was a smile that was more felt than seen. Like the sunshine in the early morning hours when walking across a meadow and the dew in the grass had not yet dried. "Love."

*

200 Years later - England

 

The dying Viking, Olaf was his name, looked at the sky. All around him it seemed crow feathers were falling down, settling around him. A winged creature descended from the sky, shield and axe in hand.

"Ah, the valkyries have come to take me to Valhalla." Olaf exclaimed, through labored breaths.

"May God forgive you, heathen." the dying Saxon a few feet beside him, hissed through his teeth. "At least I'll die knowing I fought in the Lord's name."

The winged creature had landed by now and was... crawling towards them, dragging his wings behind him. He stopped beside the Christian. "Actually, God doesn't like it all that much when you're bashing each other's heads in. Especially not in his name."

An imposing man in a white gown and equally white wings, landed beside them. "What's with the shield, Ivar? What's with the axe?"

Ivar rolled his eyes. "You're carrying a sword."

"It's a holy sword." Heahmund replied miffed.

"Yeah, well," Ivar shrugged. "That's a holy shield, that's a holy axe." He held both up, grinning broadly.

The dying Viking now turned to him, reaching out. "Are... are you a Valkyrie?"

Ivar snorted. "No, I'm an angel." He waved his wings for good measure.

Heahmund, ignoring them both, had turned to the Christian, face measured and dignified. "Your mortal toils are over. Your suffering has ended. The Lord calls you into his house."

The man smiled at Heahmund reverently.

"Yep." Ivar agreed. Then turned to the Viking. "You too, by the way."

"What?!" both the Viking and the Christian exclaimed dumbfoundedly. 

"Well, he's of the forgiving sort. Turns out you guys weren't quite so bad, throughout your years. He doesn't like the fighting and killing, but he's considering that you'll need a couple more centuries before you really get behind that."

"A couple more centuries, huh?" Heahmund asked, as they were flying the souls up to heaven. "Think they'll ever truly let off their wicked ways?"

Ivar grinned. "Have some faith."

"We can hear you, by the way." Olaf said.

"Shhh!" the Saxon interrupted him scandalized. "Don't talk like that to the angels."


End file.
